Saturday, September 24, 2005

I'm just a hunka hunka burnin love...

Have you ever noticed how the rows in airplanes going to Vegas are in seats of threes?

That means there's always an odd person sitting with you.

When my wife and I fly it's always the three hundred pound migrant farm worker who just got through spreading manure and decided, "Hey, payday, I need to go to Vegas, NOW!"

The airlines do it on purpose to get even with those of us that check in and print our boarding passes out ahead of time so we get on the "A" list.

Southwest Airlines has the A, B and C boarding groups. The earlier you check in the better your odds are of getting that all valuable "A".

Basically you start gambling before you even get to Vegas. Because trust me, you don't want to be a "C". "C's" are the odd people that end up being third person in the seat next to you. The ones that are pissed off because by the time they get on the plane all the overhead space is gone and now they have to have the flight attendant check their burlap sack.

But at least they get the peanuts first.

Why do they serve us peanuts?

Who the hell eats peanuts?

I've never come home from a hard day at the office and said, "Dammit woman where are my peanuts? You know I need my peanuts when I get home."

(If I ever said anything even remotely like that my wife would stab me... in my face.)

I think the airlines created the whole peanut thing as a way to keep our minds off the fact that we're thirty thousand feet in the air inside a steel tube going over six hundred miles an hour.

The peanuts calm us. As long as they hand out the peanuts then everything must be okay.

Once I was on a plane that handed out trail mix.

I thought we were all going to die.

I can't help it I get nervous when I fly. A friend once told me that airplane travel is much safer than traveling by train. There are more fatal train accidents than airplane accidents.

Really? Well that maybe so but I've never seen a railroad car fall FROM THE SKY!!!!!!

Give me the damn peanuts!

I don't eat the peanuts. I'm on a diet. I just need to hold them.

I love the ritual that occurs once the plane touches down.

As soon as that "fasten seatbelt sign" goes off everyone releases their seatbelt and stands up, bent over under the overhead luggage compartments, because we're too stupid to stay seated until it's our turn to get off.

I've noticed that getting off the plane is a lot like going to communion. (You're only going to get that if you're Catholic.)

The Las Vegas airport is a trip. Slot machines right there when you get off the plane. You have to be a special kind of loser to get off and airplane and run over to a slot machine.

So I'm playing the dollar slots while my wife is in the restroom and I notice that the only people playing were the people who were arriving.

That's because everyone leaving Las Vegas has no money.

I had a limousine take us to our hotel. I take limousines in Las Vegas because I don't want to end up on that HBO Taxicab Confessions show drunk with a transsexual Korean midget showgirl from Cirque du Soliel doing acrobatics in the back of the cab while my wife yells at me for losing a thousand dollars on the penny slots.

Or something like that.

By the way I'm fairly certain that Nigerian e-mail scam started in Las Vegas. If you don't believe me go there, take a cab.

I love to people watch when I'm in Las Vegas.

There are some seriously beautiful women in Las Vegas. I swear Las Vegas has the most beautiful women I've ever seen. The problem is you don't know if they come with a penis.

You see some serious crazy in Las Vegas.

I saw a woman playing the five-dollar slots at the Venetian Hotel and she was smoking.

THROUGH A HOLE IN HER NECK!!!!

And she was holding her cigarette and smoking like she was trying to look "cool" and sophisticated.

I guess at that point it really doesn't matter if you smoke or not.

But you can't look cool.

You cannot look cool smoking through a hole in your neck.

Ever.

I like to watch the people playing the slot machines in Las Vegas. Different types of people play different machines.

Old people and locals play the penny and nickel slots; Asians and people smoking through a hole in their necks play the five-dollar and up slots and everyone else plays the dollar slots. Until they're down about five hundred dollars, then the dollar slot players become quarter slot players.

I actually saw an Asian man take up smoking and turn into a local right before my eyes.

I not much of a gambler.

I'm a forty eight year old male who comes from a family with a history of heart disease. I can't take the chance I'd hit a jackpot and become so excited I'd just drop dead.

Because that would be "fate".

I don't screw with "fate."

So I just take my wife shopping.

It's kind of like gambling.

Because if she has fun at the "Forum Shops".

I might hit a jackpot.

And she might let me try to get in the Jacuzzi with her again.

We had a Jacuzzi in our suite.

After she had four scotch and waters I talked my wife into a romantic interlude in the Jacuzzi.

My wife is 4'11" and somehow she managed to climb into this thing. I try to step into it but at 5"11" my legs aren't long enough to have one foot in the Jacuzzi and the other on the ground.

This gets bad.

So I lose my balance and fall into the Jacuzzi.

I can't find my wife.

She's under water.

She's drowning.

This wasn't the kind of mouth to mouth I had in mind.So I pull her up by her hair and give her the "Heimlich" maneuver. Apparently that's the wrong maneuver to do when someone has swallowed bubble bath.

Plus I think she thought I was just going for a cheap feel.

Which brings me to why we went to the "Forum Shops" in the first place.

Come to think of it that Jacuzzi story might have been one of those things that is suppose to stay in Vegas.

I wonder if Elvis had these kinds of things happen to him?

To be continued...